


Silent Bubbline

by SilhouetteofScribe



Category: Adventure Time
Genre: F/F, Fluffy, Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 09:43:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3724195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilhouetteofScribe/pseuds/SilhouetteofScribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bubblegum needs her sleep, but Marceline just wants to rock out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silent Bubbline

The riff was mad tight, like a demon singing a lilting legato on a broken swingset. Marceline let it ring out in the still night and felt the vibration of her strings climb up the neck and into her fingertips before strumming again. The axe sang out into the distant horizon and into the inky void beyond the midnight stars. She moved her hand from the G chord to play a double vampire secret whammy note, but before she could improvise her way into the bridge, a flash of white caught her eye.

It bowled over her like a kick to the face. Although it was only a bit of padding and cotton, the surprise of it all turned the pillow into a wrecking ball. Marceline fell from her spot hovering in the tree branches and thumped down onto the wet grass below her.

“Marceline, for the love of glob – go to sleep!” Princess Bubblegum held another pillow at the ready and brandished her night gear down at Marceline. Marceline the Vampire Queen dragged the pillow from her face and glared back at Bonnie. As funny as it might be to chase her with the axe in retaliation, the Princess didn’t look in the mood for some rough housing.

“How can you sleep, Bonnibel? Look at the moon, it’s mad huge tonight!” Marcy checked the tune of her guitar. Decades of experience had taught her to always readjust the strings every twenty slams to the neck or so. “I have to play something, a night like this is rare!”

“No,” said Bubblegum, pinching the bridge of her nose, as she only did when Marcy was taxing her to the limits of her patience. “No, it isn’t. A night like this happens exactly once a month. Thirty days from now, that same moon will look the same way. And when it does, you can shred all night, okay?”

Bonnie looked too weary to argue with. Marcy floated upright gently and slung her axe over her shoulder. She raised her hands in a sign of peacekeeping. If the Princess was tired, she could have her quiet. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up…”

“It’s okay,” Princess Bubblegum sat up on her bedroll. “We’ve been traveling all day and I might just be a little on edge. I swear I’ll be nicer in the morning. But for now, can I just have a little undeserved silence?”

Marceline moved closer to Bubblegum. “We’re going to find it, Bonnibel. We can’t get there any quicker.”

“You can get there quicker,” said Bonnie. “I can’t. Just these twenty hours of travel were too much for me. I’m so beat I couldn’t even eat.”

“I sleep sometimes,” said Marceline. “I mean, I don’t gotta sleep and probably shouldn’t be eating, but that doesn’t stop me from scarfing down every Moon Pie I see.” Bonnie gave her a glare, somewhere between ‘If you steal my desserts again I’m going to lock you in a greenhouse’ and 'If I don’t get eight hours of sleep I’m going to lock you in a greenhouse’. So Marcy floated to lie down by the bedroll. “Here, I’m lying down. Peace and quiet coming up, alright?”

It wasn’t usual for her to be so giving to the perfect little princess, so Marceline thought nothing of the prolonged skeptical study Bubblegum gave her. But when there was no huge argument over noise, boundaries and the truth of rock, Peebles relaxed. “Okay then.” She sank back into the sleeping bag to rest. “Okay. Just eight hours, then I promise I’ll be all skippydee in the morning!”

“You’re never skippydee,” Marcy said, her arms crossed behind her head, floating to stare up at the clear night. She hadn’t meant to actually say it. It was supposed to be an idle thought, but Marcy’s mouth was like a safe with no lock: things best left unsaid escaped all the time. Bonnie didn’t say anything. They just lay there in silence.

The stars twinkled overhead. The moon sank lower, growing as it touched down in the horizon. Marcy watched it all, wide eyed and restless.

“Can you sleep?” Bonnie asked.

Marceline hovered a tad higher, hoping Bonnie couldn’t see her face. She snored lightly and moaned. It wasn’t what it sounded like when Simon or Jake slept, but probably easier to buy than their thunderous nightroaring. Marcy closed her eyes. If Bonnie wanted no-noise times, she’d get it. She tried to focus. It was actually pretty hard to sleep, not counting spells or Simon’s Cheers reenactments. Marcy stared at her eyelids for a moment longer, then gave up. She stared out into the moon. Were there others up there looking down on them? Was there someone looking down on her, just as unable to sleep? Did they have a radical band? Maybe they didn’t have a prissy lady keeping them quiet. Her eyes went to her guitar.

But as Marcy turned, she looked to Bonnie. The pink princess was asleep. Drool ran from her mouth and her hair was sticking to the side of her pillow, but she looked comfortable. Marcy floated upright and pulled the guitar from the strap on her back. She held it in her hands, looking down at the strings.

Marcy put the axe on the ground and floated up higher. She looked down on P.B. as rose into the air.

“Princess,” she sang softly, “Brittle Princess, disturbed even by the smallest pea, but nothing’s worse to you than me.” She took a rest at the height of the tree, and pulled an apple from a nearby bough. She weighed dropping it on the perfect’s nose, but instead took a sip of its color. “Princess, shattered glass Princess, you break and you buy, don’t look don’t touch or you will die.”

Marceline looked to the nocturnal creatures emerging from the depths of the underbrush. A bright gold snake slithered into striking distance of the sleeping bag. When it looked up to the bat demon above it, it turned a dull leaden color and then retreated beneath a mound of rocks.

“Princess, I am not a, Princess,” Marceline sang over Peeb’s sleeping body. Her hands were nothing like Bonnie’s gum flesh and berry smelling hair. “All I do is wrong and dumb, how can you and I be one?”

Marceline grabbed the guitar from where it lay and held it up. A melody played in her head, sad and full of pitiful denial. It would rock the heavens and the furthest reaches of hell. It would rip the world apart with its raw expression. It would be hot and wild. It would wake up Bonnie.

“La la-la, la de de dah doo…” Marcy vocalized quietly. She held the guitar in her hands, watching her tears drop onto the cords. “La la-la, oh la la oh-ooh-ohh… I wish I was good enough for you.”

—

Marceline awoke the next morning to the smell of strawberry tarts. A pair of arms wrapped around her shoulders. Marceline opened her eyes and looked up into a translucent umbrella. She was under the midday shade and there was a bright red silken confection in front of her. Marceline sat up and rested back against Bonnie’s chest. Her hair was a mess and she had a clot of red dye stuck to her chin from a hard night of what could only be constant projectile drool. She wiped her mouth and licked her lips.

“You hum in your sleep,” Pee Bubs said, holding the confection out for Marceline to sap the colors from.

“Hmmrrnh?” Marcy replied.

Bonnie gave her a tight squeeze. “Thanks for letting me sleep, Marcy. Why don’t you play a song for me?”

Marcy blinked her dry eyes. “Enngh.”

“That’s okay,” Bonnie said. “I let you sleep in. Take your time, we’ll head home when you’re ready.”

“Homeee…?”

“Right. Hoooome,” Bubblegum said, as gently as speaking to a toddler. “I changed my mind, we don’t have to get the divine taffy waters after all.”

“Whnn? …whhy?” Marcy said, gumming on the tart. Bonnie never changed her mind.

Bonnibel giggled, all bright eyed and skippydee. “Yeah, I’m just going to send out Finn and Jake instead. This isn’t worth losing sleep over.” She began packing things immediately. One day out from the town and they were already heading back.

Marcy groaned. How did people ever wake up? But she smiled as Bubblegum gave her a kiss on the forehead. Maybe the trip wasn’t pointless after all.


End file.
